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Challenge

Steel & Tube, New Zealand’s leading provider of steel solutions required a new IT platform to enable more efficient communication and collaboration between employees and customers.

Steel & Tube faced the challenge of shifting from its legacy platform, Lotus Notes, to one that aligned with its long-term strategy for increased collaboration and communication. The business also wanted to take the opportunity to move to a platform that integrated with its new enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management

Solution

A fully integrated IT system

Our Cloud Services for Microsoft was the perfect solution as it met the challenge of aligning with Steel & Tube’s Microsoft ERP system. A key driver for Steel & Tube was that we offered a one-stop shop to deliver all services, and to allow all of its IT systems to be fully integrated.

The project has seen Steel & Tube’s data storage shift to the cloud, securely provided by the data centre based in New Zealand. This allows it to focus on core business activities instead of the IT infrastructure.

With us, Steel & Tube has benefitted from per-user, per-month, flexible pricing that grows or contracts with its business needs. Steel & Tube now only pays for what it uses; ensuring that its IT spend is aligned to actual business needs.

A safe pair of hands

A major part of the project was understanding the business challenges and providing a complete solution for Steel & Tube. We took a consulting-led approach, holding a number of workshops with the Steel & Tube team to understand the requirements of the project.

The project had to roll-out Office 2013 to more than 700 desktops and end users.

We were there to support Steel & Tube through the change. We migrated the data from Steel & Tube’s legacy email system across to Exchange. Historic emails and all calendar information were also moved across. We then set-up shared mail boxes and integration points with other business processes and systems.

This was a substantial and collaborative project that involved both Steel & Tube and us. Our professional services project team worked closely with Steel & Tube’s project team during the implementation process to ensure end-user communication and training for a seamless transition.

Better collaboration

Our tailored IT solution went live in January 2016, and Steel & Tube are now seeing an increase in collaboration. The new system allows Steel & Tube’s employees to easily determine the availability and presence of colleagues due to the seamless integration of our Cloud Services for Microsoft with CISCO’s Unified Communications – also provided by us – and instant messaging.

Steel & Tube is also using a set of workflow and productivity tools which has standardised work across the Microsoft stack. It’s made it easier for the everyday, office-based workers to use the tools, seamlessly integrating across Microsoft Office and Exchange and Unified Communications.

Efficient communication

A large part of the workflow for Steel & Tube is taking orders through email systems. The ability to do this with ease is a business critical tool. Steel & Tube has a large number of shared mail boxes whereby an orders team actions incoming orders from customers. It was mission-critical for the business that this part of the project was implemented successfully

Result

Greater collaboration and increased productivity

The project has been a huge success. The project was completed during a cut-over weekend in December 2015. This ensured very little business interruption for Steel & Tube. The new system is fully operational and employees are working better together, and have a greater oversight of customer requirements.

An evolving solution

We have been working with Steel & Tube for more than three years, delivering a full range of services. The contract started with WAN, LAN, Internet, and security services. It has expanded to include unified communications, voice telephony, service desk and more recently, cloud services and cloud support.